How we are creating great tech teams at Altar.io

Published in

The Startup

6 min readApr 15, 2019

Building great tech teams is what makes or breaks a tech company. Bringing in the best people to solve the biggest problems is what we at Altar.io have been all about.t is also as important to have the best clients and projects as it is to have the best people. You won’t manage to keep one without the other.

But hiring can be hard: wait a little longer than you should to decide on hiring a great candidate and she/he goes somewhere else in no time. I’ve seen this happening sometimes to us, to our clients and to others. On the other hand, applying a “hire on the spot” philosophy in every situation hurts the zeal to hire quality people and can backfire.

Hence there is a need to act quickly while keeping quality standards high and having what it takes for developers to understand who you are and why you offer a great career.

We are proudly a Lisbon based Product & Software house. Photo by bruno araujo on Unsplash

At Altar.io I’ve been at the forefront of hiring talent, especially in tech areas where we are strongest: Angular and Node, the two preeminent Javascript technologies for Frontend and Backend development.

I am lucky — rom the beginning my job has been made easy for three reasons: We work on amazing global projects, we have a top tier, cutting edge, enthusiastic team we don’t need to “manage” in the traditional sense but rather nurture, and finally, we pay above the average.

We offer developers a sense of being part of a great team and exciting projects.

Over the last 24 months, after speaking with maybe a couple of hundred developers, I’ve found that the elements they value in job opportunities are ranked as follows:

Skill development perspective: This means candidates will be learning with the best people both on a formal training basis but also through daily Q&A with peers.
Value of the project: Put simply, some projects are just more disruptive and meaningful than others.
Quality of the existing team: “We have persons X, Y and Z who you’ll be working with”. Sometimes just mentioning their names and achievements makes the difference. Having these colleagues in interviews also helps a lot.
Opportunities for increased responsibility: A senior developer might be looking to become a tech lead; a project manager on small projects might be looking forward to bigger projects, and so on.
Company/Career Stability: You need to demonstrate the upward trajectory of your firm (if you are not a bank or Google) to show that you’ll be able to honor the career commitment you are making.
Pay rise: Last but not least it’s important to show how worthy the person is by offering an improvement on his/her current salary. Better pay means you attribute a lot of value to that person you are hiring. Getting in with a feeling of being valued in turn is a great starting point for a working relationship.

Conversation, meeting of minds, is the name of the game. Photo by Joshua Ness on Unsplash

But how do you find the “right” candidates? Here’s my hiring sequence of success:

1. Ask for recommendations from your most trusted colleagues

This is the number 1 predictor of recruitment success. Your team’s stars will recommend likeminded, highly professional people who they’d work with again and they will be highly transparent about them. Sometimes they are people they worked with 5 years ago or more and who they already wanted to work with again sometime in the recent past. Go for those first.

A common characteristic of our team and tech leaders is their enthusiasm.Enthusiasm for the projects they get involved in, their enthusiasm for doing tech right and getting on to contribute to the Angular and Node communities with open source

2. Do phone screenings first

Once I’ve got these recommendations,I add them up on a Google sheet handily called HH (headhunting) Shortlists. I’ll call the person right away and say so-and-so recommended that I reach out Sometimes they already knew from the introducer that I’d call.

3. Be radically transparent about the downsides and the upsides

The number one thing I talk about is what the practical challenges in the projects I’m hiring for are. Only after that do I talk about the working conditions.

Some of the positive things we offer:

Super senior colleagues from whom there is a lot to learn.
Little to no “office politics”
Above average pay
Internal Tech Training twice a month on our tech specialisms (Angular, Node.js, GraphQL, etc)
Pleasant Office with 1Gbps internet, large screens, acoustic panels, sofa, lunch area, big garden
Playstation (and regular Fifa contests)

Some not so great things:

No special perks or bonuses
No super structured onboarding process like you would get at IBM
“Agile” based projects that require a lot of changes
No company PC (BYOD)

4. Soft Skills — Ask a ton of questions to assess who you are talking with

I have an unscripted question-led conversation with the candidate over lunch, alongside a tech lead in my team. This usually helps me figure out if the person would be a positive addition. It’s a terrific sign when it is the developer asking a ton of smart questions too — showing interest, commitment and generally what the candidate will bring to the table.

5. Hard Skills — Have your tech lead hand them a short but complex component to build

This will help the tech team see how the candidate thinks when facing a challenge on his own and see the code quality. This is a crucial validation so you won’t get too swayed by just the soft skills.

6. 20 > 6 > 2 > 1

I keep fully detailed shortlists of 20 people for each technology specialism, select 6 that seem to be best positioned in seniority, skill stack and soft skills; and then usually decide between two best fits.

7. Pay

For great developers, what matters is everything described above plus a pay rise. Can you do it? It works best from the start if you can match or surpass expectations in order not to waste time.

8. Hire a two person team

Tell your interviewee you are hiring for 2 positions (If you actually are) and ask him/her if there is someone else he’d come along with or recommend. If you can convince one top candidate chances are he can also convince his best peer and this is a win-win for all.

9. Market your company

Finally, because your team and your Linkedin connections and rolodex won’t always suffice, we hold frequent Angular meetups a few times a year which attract the Javascript crowd. Needless to say everyone is bored to death if you over-pitch your company too much; it’s better to have your team present, soft selling the projects and tech stacks they work with.

All in all it’s a lot of (highly rewarding) hard work to get to the ideal team. Building awareness in the market takes a long time. But hire quickly and wisely and your company will take off, not just for the technical roles but also on the projects you work on.

By the way. If you are looking to work with us on great Angular/Node projects in the 200-days-of-sun city of Lisbon feel free to write to me: andre@altar.io.

And By The Way,

I’m the Co-Founder of Altar.io & 10kstartup — a team of experienced second time founders & world class developers and product talents based in London and Lisbon. We help startups and corporates to build great tech products.

If you have a brilliant idea that you want to bring to life, just drop me a few lines in a private message and let’s chat!

Thanks for reading,
Andre

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